Izzy Does the Charleston

AMONGST THE ARCHIVES’ diplomas, formal photos, and exam papers marking the achievements of young men in the early days of OAC and OVC, there can be found traces of another side of the campus story. Preserved in scrapbooks, photo albums, and yearbooks are the stories of the “Mac Girls”—young women who took courses in “domestic art and science” at the Macdonald Institute in the early 20th century. Isabel McGiffin was in the “Normals” program (a precursor to teacher’s college) at Mac in the 1920s, and her scrapbook is exemplary for the way it preserves both her personal experience and a period in time. Documents like Isabel’s scrapbook became unwitting time capsules, showing how young women sought to navigate this period of massive social transformation and changing gender roles while exploring the challenges and opportunities associated with obtaining a post-secondary education. 

The snapshots, dance cards, and other ephemera found in these scrapbooks were frequently annotated with in-jokes, slang, or pop culture references. One of my favourites in Isabel’s, found under a crepe paper “Miss Ottawa” sash, reads: “Initiation Sept 1927—Normals put on Bathing Beauty Show—I did the Charleston.” Often unintentionally making statements on culture, gender, and social activities, annotations such as these make confidants out of contemporary viewers and we become invested in their daily experiences—how did Isobel feel at her initiation bathing beauty show? Proud of her trendy new dance skills? Nervous at the attention as she represented her hometown? Exposed? Or empowered? 

Mentions of the “Sweat Shirt Gang” or S.S.G. recur frequently throughout scrapbooks, albums, and in yearbook quotes of the mid-1920s. The gang’s name and notoriety (a campus paper treats a post-graduation reunion of the “S.S.G.” as an event) speaks to their brave exploration and bold embrace of changing concepts of femininity—displayed here through their bobbed hair, sporty clothing, and androgynous nicknames (that’s Isabel, now ‘Izzy’, second from the left) and the mark this made on their peers

ON ANOTHER PAGE, next to a souvenir napkin and a preserved telegram, we see a dance card for “Conversat,” the annual formal. The card is filled with claimed dances to popular songs—from the romantic “My Blue Heaven” to the lively “Sweetheart of Sigma Chi” (perfect for a demonstration of Izzy’s Charleston skills). This provides an interesting ability to engage with history in a multi-sensory capacity – listening to recordings of the songs while turning the pages of the dance card, noticing the name ‘Alan’ on the dance card and again after unfolding the telegram beside it. An intimacy and connection with the creator is cultivated across the ages.

Scrapbooks, never intended for academic extrapolation or public display, provide a uniquely intimate record of the past. They transform the everyday, often discarded ephemera associated with sentimentality, and with the feminine, into a historical document. Although at first glance, scrapbooks like Izzy’s, with their taped-in ticket stubs, snapshots, and hand scrawled in-jokes appear trivial, these private records are elevated when preserved and viewed with the distance of history and within the context of the rest of the Macdonald Institute archive. Where course notes and class registers fail is where scrapbooks excel, providing not only a more intimate look at the lives of individual students, but one might argue, a more holistic snapshot of the period as a whole.